A new adsorption desalination-cooling system with four beds and two evaporators to enhance freshwater production

The problem of energy and water shortages is increasing worldwide due to population growth and climate change. Also, desalination technology is an intensive energy process to produce fresh water from salty water. This paper presents an innovative system for an adsorption desalination-cooling system to improve the system's performance. The new system consists of four beds, a condenser, and two evaporators, which provide a relatively high adsorption cycle performance for freshwater production, in addition to a cooling effect. This paper also compares the proposed adsorption system performance with the conventional adsorption desalination systems. The new adsorption desalination system is simulated through a validated MATLAB model based on the author's previous experimental work. The novel system produces a maximum possible rate of freshwater of 20.5 m³/ton of silica gel per day with a gain output ratio of 0.85, along with a cooling effect of 220 W/kg of silica gel with a coefficient of performance of 0.42. The utilization factor of the proposed system is 1.27. The results also showed that the cost of producing 1 m³ of freshwater using solar energy is 4.24 $, which is considered lower than the cost of water production in the traditional system by about 40 %.